lucid dreaming

state of mind

both times we’ve purposefully accessed a WILD so far have been from a state of purposeful accord among the three of us, with <for-what?> clearly in mind.

update: have accessed many more than two times at this point, this kind of intense purposefulness helps but has not proven to be strictly necessary

seems wildly easier to access them from an alert-calm state, too. second success we’ve had since the first-try was after spending the evening (about two hours) doing other mental-config type play.

breathing

as an obstacle, i think right now breathing regulation is the one we need to focus on. not in a ‘i must remain conscious and in control of my breath’ way, but in a ’this has to be normal so i don’t get exited and break the state’ way. which i think might just come from getting the state multiple times on command.

stabilization

still working on this. current techniques i’m trying are grounding through senses, narrative tricks (‘ACME lucidity pills’), and normalizing the state itself.

soul anatomy

image

birdwatching

ghouls

i think i instinctively feel more afraid of ghouls than i do of eg. vampires. not like… abstractly, i think vampires as a class are much more deadly than ghouls, but to a younger version of myself the idea of ghouls was frightening. agentic malice was easier to conceptualize as ultimately derivative of mustache-twirling villains, but stupidity with the same structure was just painful to imagine. (i’m sure that has nothing to do whatsoever with my parent’s undead types. /s.)

liches

“surely if they run on hope they have to being doing something good, right? right??”

actually no. sorry. you can put hope in an empire. or a god.

my attempt to build a halo when i was 12-ish collapsed because it’s just… genuinely not necessary for my existence.

  • eric winestine? seems unresolved right up until the point the empire is dead. “oh no, the state is like. for important stuff, you can’t question the powers that be too deeply else risk collapse!”

edit: no, nvm. he’s definitely a vamp. ugh. could have just gone with initial impression on that one.